Archives

#7 For the PRO: If your USB flash drive has an LED light, check if its illuminated or not. If it isn’t, then its possible that your drive doesn’t get enough power from the port its plugged into. Just try a different one or another computer to check if this is the case. If a restart of the respective host machine doesn’t help to juice up the USB port you should seriously consider buying a stronger power supply unit. Insufficient power is actually a widespread problem with computers especially if its extensively used with high graphics games and applications. As this may also have to do with general overclocking, you may want to try a free overclocking tool to adjust components and resources. For an overview check these sites:

Beware though that this is more for the professional! I take no responsibility if your computer may end up with more damage than before if you don’t know what youre doing or fail to properly educate yourself.

A similar professional solution to solve this problem may be to turn off your computer, unplug it from all power and then proceed to physically clean your mother board. After you’ve cleaned it, release the jumper of the USB power in the motherboard.

Take it out for a few seconds and put it back in. You can also try to switch the jumper to a new position, like from from 5V to 5V Standby or vice versa. Apparently this has worked for some folks who knew what they were doing – like this guy on the softwaretipsandtricks forum where I got this from: http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/85640-post7.html

#8 There may be a virus on your computer which blocks your flash drive and other things to work properly. In that case, do a scan with your currently installed anti virus program and remove anything it finds. If that doesn’t work or you don’t have an anti virus program installed yet, its time that you download a good program from the internet. Personally I recommend malwarebytes Anti-Malware which has a great free version and can be registered for real time protection with a one time fee. This program has recovered and saved my computer many times from infections that other AV programs weren’t able to fix, let alone discover! They have a great help forum too. But there are many other programs to choose from so just scour the net for free (trial) versions.

#10 If all of the above fails and you can get over the fact of losing your data, try to reformat your flash drive. This will only work if you can get the drive to be recognized on another port or operating system.
Just go to my computer, find your flash drive and do a right mouse click. Choose “format”, pick the settings and file format system you like and click start.

FAT(16) can be used for best performance with drives of 2GB & below, but generally FAT32 is recommended with cross-compatibility for most operating systems. NTFS is only useful for Vista and XP in case you want to get additional controls like group or owner settings and file permissions. Windows 7 even offers a USB specific format now, called exFAT.

#11 At this point you may have to face the fact that your flash drive is simply defective. Here, the only thing left to do is checking or contacting the manufacturer’s website. Just look up the brand in your favorite search engine and you should be able to find their customer service on the respective website. Here are some support sites of common flash drive brands:

There may be a driver or firmware update for your flash drive or some fix posted. If not, you should just contact them and hopefully they can get it to work for you. If you still have a valid warranty on the product you may get a replacement sent to you. Or you could just buy a new flash drive. Since most are pretty affordable these days this would be the easiest and a possible “take it up a notch” solution. If you have critical data stored on the malfunctioning drive though, this is a tough luck solution (like #10).

Well, that’s it. This concludes our 2-part article on fixing the “usb device not recognized” error. Hopefully your flash drive is functioning again. If you still have problems or have come across some other causes and solutions please make a comment below.

So you plug in your flash drive and get the mostly annoying message: “USB device not recognized”. Or you discover that your device isn’t working without giving any message at all – which is even more annoying, if not flat out rude.

So what can you do? Well, before pulling out your hair, cussing at your computer or getting out a hammer just relax and read on. Because there are 11 possible causes and solutions which I have picked from the net and present to you here in a two-part series. These are laid out for Windows XP but the principles apply for other versions as well as other OS. Just give it a go and with a little luck and diligence, you may have a working flash drive again!

#1 Your operating system may not meet the minimum requirements, especially if its an older version like Windows 3.1 or 98. Check with the flash drive packaging, manual or the manufacturer’s website to see what the requirements are. If you find that your OS isn’t compatible you may want to try formatting the drive to a different format. The best solution however would be to upgrade to a newer OS. (Where have you been all this time?

#2 Often this message is brought about when the flash drive was not properly removed via the “safely remove hardware” procedure. Often, a drive is still being operational or written to when simply yanked out. Since that can corrupt the memory (and your data!), the error message is likely to appear next time you plug in your drive.

Check with another USB port if you have one and see if it gets recognized there. If it doesn’t, check with another computer altogether. If it works there, you know the problem is with the respective computer/OS and not the flash drive. As a possible solution, simply reboot that computer. This may help as the computer will reload the drivers and settings for the removable hardware. You can also try restarting the computer with the flash drive plugged in. Be aware though that this is also often the cause for the “USB device not recognized” error. So this approach is kind of like “a tooth for a tooth”.

In the future, make sure to click on the remove hardware icon with the green arrow.

Alternatively, you can ensure that the “safely remove hardware” balloon notification is turned on in your settings (so that this wont happen again). Go to your start menu, right mouse click “properties”, then at the bottom click “customize” – which opens a new window named “customize notifications”. To the right of “Safely Remove Hardware” choose “hide when inactive” or “always show”. So next time you get notified, click on the balloon and follow the safe removal prompts.

#3 Your USB port may be broken or just throwing the occasional hissy fit (they’re entitled too, aren’t they?). To find out, plug in another USB device and see if it works or gives you the same type of trouble. If so, try the rebooting solution for #2 or simply buy a new USB port.

#4 It is also possible this is caused by switching the flash drive between different computers (which is pretty much its purpose, isn’t it) and generating drive letter conflicts. But usually this only happens when you have a fixed drive letter assigned to it via your main computer which is in conflict with the letter assignments on the other computer. Drive letter conflicts may also suddenly occur after service pack upgrades. In this case, assign or change the drive letter. Go to the control panel, use category view, choose performance and maintenance, click computer management and then disk management. After you have located your flash drive, use right mouse click, choose “add”, “assign the following drive letter” and “accept”.

If you just need to change the drive letter, find the one associated with your USB drive (via disk management or “my computer”) and click the right mouse button and choose “Change Drive Letter and Paths”. This will display a window with the currently assigned drive letter. Click on the “change” button in that window so that a drop down list with all the possible drive letters will appear. Simply choose a new one that is less likely to cause conflicts like x, y or z. You can insert the flash drive and see if it shows up with the newly assigned drive letter.

#5 Your current USB driver may be outdated. Go to your start menu, “my computer”, right mouse click and choose “manage” and then “device manager”. Locate your flash drive which may be found under disk drives, DVD/CD-ROM or USB controls as USB mass storage. Click your right mouse button and choose “update driver”.

If that doesn’t help, click “uninstall” instead. Then choose action and scan for hardware changes. This will completely install the driver again. If that also doesnt solve the error, you may want to use your installation CD for this step (if it didn’t already ask you for it) since its possible that the driver on the computer has become corrupted. It is also possible that you simply need to install the latest service pack from Windows. This is unlikely to be the cause but its worth a shot. (Actually, some users have reported that their flash drives weren’t working after they updated to the newest service pack. Usually changing or assigning the drive letter will help in this regard. See #3)

#6 If youre using a USB extension cable try plugging in the flash drive without it. (I love this one )